I was terrified – crying out to Him with all of my heart. I couldn’t believe God was speaking to me, nor could I believe He would say this … ask this. Not now. I grew up in a non-religious or spiritual home. We neither read the Bible nor attended church, except for Easter Sunday. I began talking to God at 13 when I discovered my parents were not my biological parents. It didn’t matter that I never heard a response from Him. He was my “imaginary friend.”

At 26 I married, and we had our only child eighteen months later. Our daughter was hospitalized twice in her first 90 days with different forms of RSV pneumonia. We struggled financially. While I worked two jobs, my husband ran his own resume business so he could stay with our child during the day and prevent another bout of RSV. The new business produced income but took all that it made to continue. We had no health insurance and no way to obtain any for a child who was hospitalized so early in life.

Eight months after her birth, I was involved in a car accident and unable to work for months. I remember thinking, my God, what’s next? Why are you punishing me? The stress was unbearable. Times were excruciatingly difficult, and we were approaching financial disaster. For the first time I truly felt helpless, and real depression set in.

One Sunday afternoon, our child suddenly became very ill. Within 15 minutes, she changed from an active two-year-old playing with her toys, to a lifeless form lying on our living room floor, unable to keep anything down. Her temperature was 102 degrees and climbing. My mom, who lived right behind me, told me to bring her over. We bathed her in cool water and swabbed her down with alcohol to reduce her fever, but still it soared.

We gave her Tylenol, but the medicine wouldn’t stay down. Repeated messages left with her pediatrician’s answering service brought no replies.

As she lay on Mom’s floor, I suddenly remembered a lady at work who was an evangelical holy roller. At their church, they laid hands on each other and people were healed. The lady never explained how they did it, but it was worth a try. Crying and praying, I kneeled over my child, laid my hands upon her tiny back and begged God to heal her. I promised God all kinds of things. I begged for forgiveness. I even begged for her illness to be put upon me. My mother watched in amazement.

The doctor finally returned my calls at 6:45 PM saying he had called in a prescription to a local pharmacy. It closed at 7:00 PM on Sunday and was at least 15 minutes away. Driving down the road past the church where outdoor sermons were preached from a grounded boat each Sunday, I began to cry hysterically. It hit me that my child could suffer brain damage or die from the high fever. I hated to leave her, but I had to get the medicine. Again I begged God to heal her tiny, innocent body, but this time, I was screaming it out loud in the car through the tears and mucus streaming down my face.

It was then that I heard a firm but loving male voice. The loudness of it seemed to fill the van, but it also seemed to be just in my head. I stopped breathing. “Will you give her to me?” the voice asked. “What?” I screamed. I gulped my first breath in seconds, wiping my eyes and nose on the sleeve of my shirt, and glanced around my van to see if someone had somehow slipped inside.

A gain, the voice spoke, louder yet softer somehow. It asked again, “Will you give her to me?”
My mind spun in circles. Had I somehow slipped off of the edge of reality? This was a real possibility considering the stress I’d been under for the last few months. I began a series of small “systems checks.” Am I driving? Yes. Is it evening? Yes. Is today Sunday? Yes. I even pinched myself on the arm to be sure I wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. That hurt! The voice waited patiently for me to process what was happening.

“Will you give her to me?” He asked.

”How can you ask me that question?” I screamed. “Are you trying to tell me it’s already too late? Have you already taken her and are preparing me so when I get to my mom’s house and find she’s dead, I can cope with it? Why would you ask this of me?”

I felt so angry and scared that I had actually pulled over into a grocery store parking lot and wondered if I should just go back home. I couldn’t stop shaking. If God was taking my child and I headed back home right now, maybe I could spend the last few moments with her in my arms as she left this world and returned to Him.

A s this last terrible thought crossed my mind, I realized that, in Truth, she was already His. She was “on loan” to us from God. I cried so hard I nearly choked. As this reality sunk in, I whispered the answer through my tears.

“Yes, I will give her back to You, if I must.” It was the single most profound moment of my life. My heart was breaking, yet at the same time was relieved because the fear had gone. I couldn’t lose what I didn’t possess. This was the first time since her birth that I fully realized my little girl belonged not to me, but to her Creator.

A s if He were right there listening to my thoughts, He said, “I created her. I breathed life into her. She is mine.” “I understand,” I responded, sobbing. “I don’t want to lose her, Father, but I will give her back to you.”

“Well done, my good and faithful servant,” He said quietly in the most loving voice I’d ever heard.This startled me almost more than actually hearing the voice. “How can I be a good and faithful servant when I don’t even attend church regularly?”

The pharmacy was closed, and I arrived back at Mom’s house within 20 minutes. Climbing the stairs, an indescribable surreal peace filled me. I knew I would open that door to find my mother hunched over my daughter’s lifeless body. I didn’t know how I would handle it.

“Ma-ma,” my daughter said, as she greeted me at the door, “I feel all better now.”

She had a big cup of juice in one hand and a cherry Popsicle in the other as she hugged my leg, turned around and ran off to play. It was as if she had never been sick at all. The fever was gone, and her appetite had returned as if nothing had happened.

I glanced at my mom who was sitting in her chair munching a Popsicle. “What happened to her, Mom?” “I don’t know,” Mom replied. “Her temperature shot up to 104 degrees right after you left and I couldn’t get her to wake up. I got up to call an ambulance, and when I came back she was sitting up asking for something to drink. It happened about 20 minutes ago.”

What I learned that day changed me forever. God is real. I never needed to know that more than in the moment He spoke to me. What I thought was mine, never was; she is His. And I was “enough” for God, just the way I was.

About the author:
Rita Carlson is a 45-year-old Tampa native who explores her creative side making and selling jewelry. She and her daughter volunteer their time for the homeless and support other local nonprofit organizations.

8 Responses to “When God Spoke To Me – She Is Mine”

God is great !!! … Hi im a 17year old student from NZ, I’ve just been randomly roaming the net and came across this story. It really has hit my heart, well done for the wise and most hardest decision ever. In order to have a solid trustworthy relationship with OUR father we must come out of our comfort zone to experience that miraculous change in our lives, we must be willing to let our matters fall into Gods hands because through him we find peace and salvation. Isaiah 41:9-10 this is something that I think truly suits this story/testimony .. may God continue to bless you and your family, more so your work :)

@ Anonymous poster of Sept. 26th
Society would have you believe many things were you to look to different groups of people. Schizophrenia would be voices all the time, not just this one occassion. They would also be different. There’s also more symptoms that one represents when inflicted with this mental disorder.
Don’t be so quick to deny that God would interact with his children. He speaks to us everyday in many, many ways. It’s up to us to listen to him.

God is real and God is good, He speaks to in many ways sometimes through dreams, just a strong conviction, through others and yes sometimes through an audible voice. Today’s society is filled with pagans that will dismiss any super natural experience as a disease.

This story reminded me very much of a couple of instances in my own life.

I met a girl and fell deeply in love with her. However, she told me that she could not date me as I was not a Christian. I wanted her so much that I said I would attend a meeting she wanted to go to that was many miles away and at least find out more.

On the way to the meeting, I got caught up in traffic and we were running late. I decided to cut across country and was going fast to catch up some time. I shot up a small side road that went uphill and was approaching the brow of the hill when I heard a man’s voice commanding me to STOP!.

It was as if he was a passenger in my car and yet there was no-one there. I stopped and told the girl. She had heard nothing. Thoiugh we were late I felt compelled to get out of the car and walk about 50 yards to the brow of the hill. I did exactly that and when I got there I looked beyond the hill.

The hill ended suddenly and any car coming over the brow of the hill would have nosedived about 100 feet onto a concrete road beneath. At some time there had been a bridge across the road but it had now been removed. Had I continued to drive up the hill another 50 yards, we would almost certainly both be dead.

We reversed down the hill and eventually arrived at the meeting. It had started late so we had missed nothing. At that very meeting, the speaker preached as if it was directly for me. I responded and became a Christian.

8 years later, I was now happily married with three sons. The youngest was just a year old.

One day he fell dreadfully ill and was rushed to hospital. He was diagnosed with chronic nutrapaenia, which is an absence of white healing cells. They gave us little hope saying he would be unlikely to live long as he had no resistance whatsoever to infection. They said he would live all of his days in the hospital in a plastic bubble to protect him from bacteria.

We were devastated and at our wits end.

Then we heard from God again. He told us to honour Him and give the child back to Him. It felt like God was going to take Him and our son was going to die. But we decided, against all our feelings, to do this.

We prayed and offered our son back to God, saying that whether our child stayed with us and lived or went to be with God and died, we would accept God’s wisdom. It was the hardest prayer We had ever spoken.

Then, within hours our son became fully well and sat up in bed. The doctor checked him over and said he was totally well and could come home. He called it a miracle saying he had never seen a child go from being so poorly to so well so quickly. His readings were dangerously low when he was ill but now were incredibly high. Now he had more healing cells than the healthiest person.

Our son is now a strapping 6 footer who excels at every sport he enters. He has never ever had a problem with illness and in fact hasn’t even had a cold since. He is the healthiest person I have ever known.

I could give many many more examples of God helping us over the years that are as miraculous as these but it would take a book to contain it all.

Anonnymous Says:
December 12th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Clearly underlying mental problems… There is no God, no Heaven or any continuation of the being after death… Face the fact… This is all that exist…
No Gods, No Masters…

HOW DO YOU DISMISS ALL OF THE TESTIMONIES OF ALL THE PEOPLE FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE AND FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD REGARDING GOD?? HOW CAN ALL THESE PEOPLE BE MAKING UP STORIES, AND HOW CAN “YOU” EXPLAIN ALL OF THE SUPERNATURAL EVENTS AND OUTCOMES AND HEALINGS AND MIRACLES ??
SO WHETHER YOU THINK IN YOUR HEAD THAT THERE IS OR THERE IS NOT A GOD DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT THERE IS A GOD, THERE HAS TO BE, OTHERWISE HOW DID ANYTHING THAT EXISTS NOW COME TO EXISTENCE WITHOUT A CREATOR? IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES SENSE, EVEN IF ONE WOULD BELIEVE IN THE DUMB THEORY OF EVOLUTION, WHERE DID THE BIG BANG COME FROM AND WHAT CAUSED IT OUT OF NOTHINGNESS ?http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2RD4vTuPN0

The Lord’s word and his presence does not ever have to be argued. I learned that the hard way. Let “ANONYMOUS” who doesn’t believe in God, however seems to stumble upon a faith-based story (yea ok) believe what he wants. Allow him to spend eternity where ever he BELIEVES he will. I have heard stories of people hearing from God and you’re story was very inspiring and a blessing. God is with you and your daughter.